Education Resources

April 21, 2006

Bulk property

Filed under: Chemistry Terms — @ 8:55 am

Bulk property

In chemistry, materials science, and other scientific disciplines, a bulk property of a substance is one that is independent of the amount of that substance being measured.

For instance, the mass of a substance is not a bulk property, because it depends on the amount of that substance being measured; one cubic meter of lead weighs a million times as much as a cubic centimeter of lead. However, both have the same density; thus, density is a bulk property.

Other examples of bulk properties include refractive index, concentration, half-life, elastic modulus, and tensile strength.

The concept is similar to that of per capita measurements in economics.

1 Comment »

  1. bulk density of cuprous acetilyde

    Comment by arie — May 9, 2006 @ 11:45 pm

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

The Catalyst